Ravi Arvind Palat

‘Eyes wide shut’: reconceptualizing the Asian crisis

Rather than seeing the spectacular collapse of stock and currency markets in East and Southeast Asia in 1997-98 as a financial crisis caused by imprudent banking practices and ‘crony capitalism,’ this article argues that the economic meltdown was a symptom of the collapse of the social coalitions underpinning the developmental states. The first section charts the contours of these social alliances between the late 1940s and the mid 1980s. The second section demonstrates that though the creation of a regional division of labor had enabled these economies to withstand the debt crisis, the progressive trans-border expansion of corporate production and procurement networks rendered national industrial policies increasingly incoherent. It charts how governments were able to paper over cracks in their domestic social alliances through debt-financed industrial expansion till the mid-1990s. Finally, the last section highlights emerging tensions in the different national constellations of power and privilege.

World Turned Upside Down? Rise of the global South and the contemporary global financial turbulence

Abstract By focusing on the consequences of the dismantling of regulations over the financial sector, the current debate on the causes of the global economic meltdown obscures the cyclical occurrence of speculation in capitalism, as the accumulation of more capital than can be profitably invested in the production and sale of commodities results in financial expansion. Historically financial expansion has signalled the end of one world-scale system of accumulation and the transition to a new system as capital flows from declining powers to rising powers. However, the contemporary period is distinguished by capital flows from rising powers to declining ones. An analysis of the current crisis suggests a reversal of this anomaly as it reduces the ability of China and other East Asian states to support the US dollar. At the same time ‘emerging market economies’ have begun to forge new relationships that could provide the framework for a new system of partnership between states and enterprises to reconstruct a new cycle of accumulation if two hurdles are overcome: 1) absorption of labour that is being displaced because of the high organic composition of capital and 2) dampening of the growing inequalities in income which has not only restricted the growth of markets but is also fuelling increasing social conflict.

Popular revolts and the state in Medieval South India: A study of the Vijayanagara empire (1360-1565)

In this context, the extraordinary incidence of popular revolts in the inscriptional record of the reign of Devaraya II (1422-46) provides an excellent vantage point for an examination of the relations between social classes and the state in the Vijayanagara era. These inscriptions, recording as they do the proclamations of the popular classes in re bellion,2 are an eloquent testimony to their strength and vigour. Epi graphical references to these revolts, however, remain confined to the Tamil country and are absent from the Telegu and Kannada countries regions which constituted the heartland of the Empire. Moreover, even in the Tamil country, the sources do not record incidences of similar protests by peasants and artisans after circa 1450. These temporal and spatial dimensions of the revolts, it will be argued here, illustrate the changing nature of the relations between the nucleus of Vijayanagara power and the peripheral areas over which it claimed hegemony.

Empire, Food and the Diaspora: Indian Restaurants in Britain

Abstract Despite being called ‘Indian restaurants’, the family-run curry houses that are characteristic of high streets in Britain are primarily run by Bangladeshi and Pakistani migrants. This article links the evolution of these restaurants in Britain to colonial history, migration after Independence and contemporary political changes. It analyses the popularity of curry houses alongside the continuing racism meted out to the wait staff and patrons by white Britons in the context of colonial history, migration patterns and the changing industrial fortunes of India and Britain in the post-World War II era. The emergence of wealthy and highly-credentialed Indians and British-born Asians has led to the rise of upmarket eateries and to a sharp bifurcation in diasporic communities.

GEOPOLITICS AND NEW SPATIAL IMAGINARIES

The three articles that follow in this CAS feature collection—those by Candela, Harrar, and Fisher Onar—were first written for a workshop entitled “Shifting Geopolitical Ecologies and New Spatial Imaginaries,” during the third Inter- Asian Connections conference in Hong Kong, in June 2012. The aim of the workshop was to identify and bring into discussion emerging mental, cultural, and political conceptions of spatial categories in Asia. Workshop organizers Caglar Keyder and Ravi Arvind Palat introduce the articles below and Palat provides background and context for the articles in his own article, “Maps of Time, Clocks of Space: Changing Imaginaries of Asia” (397–410).

Much ado about nothing? World-historical implications of the re-emergence of China and India

China and Indias increasing prominence in the world economy has not been accompanied by an equally prominent role for them in world politics. The opening up of the two giant trans-Himalayan neighbors has allowed corporations to fragment production operations into part-processes and distribute them across the planet to benefit from wage and cost differentials. This has significantly impaired the strength of domestic manufacturing lobbies and of industrial labor and led to the hollowing out of manufacturing sectors and the widening of inequalities in income and wealth everywhere. New forms of industrial organizations emerging in China and India – hybrid state–private partnership arrangements and large diversified corporations – have not been conducive to creating well-paying jobs or the self-organization of workers that has thus far been the hallmark of industrial capitalism in leading states. This set the stage for a worldwide depoliticization of politics. In the West, though it was articulated differently given distinct political formations, the decline of industrial labor and the greater political organization of big business led to a rightward shift in politics with the Reagan and Thatcher governments. The influence of US universities was felt worldwide as they attracted students from all over. In both China and India, the rise of a substantial middle class whose interests were tied to their comperes in the United States led them to acquiesce in US domination on the world stage. In these conditions, the onset of a financial crisis in 2008 may have set the stage for the beginnings of a major transformation. China responded with a massive stimulus program that benefitted many resource-rich and energy-rich states. And Chinas continuing need for energy and strategic industrial raw materials lead to the possibility of greater confrontation with the United States over Iran and other issues while the growth of a domestic market lessens reliance on exports to the United States. Indian conglomerates have not only used the opportunity presented by the crisis to make major corporate acquisitions overseas but the looming US withdrawal from Afghanistan is also leading New Delhi to reassess its role in the region in the context of its rivalry with Pakistan.

MAPS OF TIME, CLOCKS OF SPACE

When Asia was conceptualized as Europes “other,” it was also cast as a temporally delimited concept: once capitalist modernity—assumed to operate evenly across the globe by conservatives, liberals, and the left—spread to eastern Eurasia, the differences between two unequal halves of the continent were expected to evaporate. The persistence of differences long after “Asia” was incorporated into the capitalist world-economy has led to a cartographic definition of the continent. Such definitions do not allow for historical processes that reshape relations between peoples, forging new links and severing old ones. This article traces the changing imaginaries of Asia historically. Since there are no indigenous conceptions of the continent, the author argues that the changing imaginaries of Asia are linked to wider geopolitical processes. When eastern Eurasia was subordinated to the drives of the capitalist world-economy, existing linkages were severed and territories were linked to, or through, colonial metropoles. After a brief period of autarkic development after decolonization, states along the Pacific coasts were increasingly integrated through production and procurement networks leading to a new imaginary of Asia. Since the end of the cold war and the emergence of independent states with large hydrocarbon resources in Central Asia, countries that were once excluded from cold war imaginaries of Asia—as well as India—are being integrated through newer imaginaries that reflect the greater prominence of China and India today as well as the rise of Islamic militancy and new ethnic conflicts.

On new rules for destroying old countries

The attacks on 11 September 2001 were not a major security threat to the United States, but they did create the political conditions for the implementation of an aggressive agenda by the Bush administration to assert U.S. dominance over the global control of oil and to establish an arc of military bases to contain China. Responding to Gowan, this article suggests that bid is unlikely to succeed because the concentration of military strength in the United States is paralleled by a concentration of financial strength in East and Southeast Asia. Though its Asian allies have been more supportive of the U.S. invasion of Iraq than their European counterparts, growing economic integration along Asias Pacific coasts is likely to lead to a reduction in capital inflows to the United States and thereby aggravate the consequences of its high current accounts deficits and its low rates of domestic savings. The Bush administrations conservative social policies and anti-foreigner zeitgeist is also sapping the competitive edge of the U.S. economy in new technologies.

The Indian Ideology

Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology. Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective, 2012. 191 pp. Indian Ideology—deliberately titled in allusion to Karl Marxs writings on his own country—is Perry Andersons m...

Convenient Fictions, Inconvenient Truths: A Comment on Öniş and Bayram

Ziya Onis and Ismail Emre Bayram seek to assess whether the rapid rates of growth experienced by the Turkish economy since it weathered a severe crisis in 2001 as measured by several indices—high levels of investment, especially foreign investment; sustained “export orientation;” increased outlays for education, research and development; sustained economic and political stability, and “favorable regional dynamics” as the European Union (EU) enlargement process—are merely a flash in the pan or sustainable over the long-run. To do this they cast the Turkish trajectory against the “miracle economies” of East Asia, as well as some other middle-and low-income economies in Latin America and elsewhere. Based on this analysis, they conclude that while there are some serious concerns—low domestic savings rate, large deficits in the current account, tapering off the EU accession process, dependence on foreign capital and export markets— long-term sustainable growth can be achieved in Turkey if these vulnerabilities are addressed.